Tuesday, July 10, 2007

On walking alone

One of the biggest sacrifices you can make is to adjust your rhythm and habits to accommodate someone else’s. And one of the most profound luxuries in life is to move through the world at exactly your own pace.

Of course society would crumble if we didn’t adapt ourselves left and right—to the needs of family, lovers, and friends; to the flow of traffic; to a work schedule.

But every now and then you’ve got to let yourself move to nothing more or less than your internal beat--the particular rhythm of your own heart and mind--if only to remember that it does indeed exist, under all the shifts and syncopations life imposes.

I walked the Camino de Santiago alone, and I’m very glad I did.

I thought I’d be one of few, but I wasn’t. I’d estimate that twenty to thirty percent of pilgrims were walking alone, most because they wanted it that way, a few because companions had pulled out at the last minute. And even most of those in the latter category had come to see the change in plans as a blessing in disguise.

But first, a disclaimer: I like to travel alone. I also like to travel with others. But for something as personal as a pilgrimage, going it alone seems the best way to ensure that the trip doesn’t slip into tourist mode or that you miss half of what there is to see and feel along the way.

I saw many pairs on the Camino, walking along deep in conversation about things back home (a spouse, a child, a job). Sure it’s great to talk with old friends, but you can do that at a café near your house. Why travel so far, lugging all you need on your back, walking a route that people have walked for over 1000 years, just to talk to a friend you can talk to back home?

Don’t waste the walk on idle talk. Keep quiet, look around, and see what it feels like to move through the world alone. Which is (not to be morbid) fundamentally the way we all walk through this world.

Many people confuse being alone with being lonely. But I felt more lonely among crowds of chattering friends of friends in Rome than I ever felt walking solo on the camino. Walking, you’ll have a community of like-minded pilgrims with whom to strike up a conversation. If you want company, you’ll have it. And if you don’t, your desire to keep to yourself will be respected. This is a pilgrimage, not a high school reunion.

If you’re concerned about safety, don’t worry. I started the walk wearing one of those around-the-neck pouches that hold all your cash and documents. Two or three days in, the pouch felt hot and bulky and the left shoulder strap of my pack had dug the cord of the pouch into my shoulder, rubbing it raw. I moved the pouch to the map pocket of my pack and never looked back, literally or figuratively.

I wasn’t completely trusting. In cities I wore the neck pouch. And when staying in a hostal, I would take that pouch with me when I left my pack in the communal bunkhouse. But other than those minor precautions I really didn’t worry about security—for my possessions or for my person. My fellow pilgrims were never anything but decent and helpful.

If you’re thinking of walking alone but are wavering, I offer hearty encouragement for you to go for it. Walk it alone, at your own pace, and you’ll really feel and see the camino.

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

The Compostelana


When you get to Santiago you go to the Pilgrims Office, where you stand in line to present your stamped credencial and apply for the certificate of a completed pilgrimage, called the compostelana. At the pilgrimage museum in Santiago, I saw a copy of a compostelana from the 1800s, and it looked pretty much like the one I received (see above).

The certificate is in Latin; any readers of Latin want to translate? (Click on the image to enlarge it.)

Credencial, or Pilgrim's Passport


When you start walking you get a multi-paged cardboard booklet called a credencial. As you stay at pilgrim hostals and visit churches, you get stamps showing where you've been. To get into most albergues or hostals you have to show the credencial. Some hospitaleros (people that run the hostals) really study the credencial to make sure you're a pilgrim and not a tourist; others hardly glance at it and just stamp it.

Above are the first few pages of my credencial.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Rome asserts its shape and speed

I hope to write more about the camino soon, but Rome has taken me up in a whirlwind of heat and grime and beauty and good food and wine. It's all about crossing to the other side of the street for a little patch of shade, standing in line to see ruins and museums, and wandering into churches and staying because a coolness emanates up from the marble or mosaic floors. We recover in bars and cafes and osterias.

I feel more tired here than I did on the camino, and there's less time and space to think. I would do it differently next time--not rush from the Camino to another blockbuster experience.

I have a lot of notes for more camino-related entries but I don't know if any of them will address the big questions: Did I walk far enough? What did I get out of it? I do know that once the plane wisked me from Santiago to Rome the focus did scatter.

Maybe once I'm home the walk will take shape in retrospect and I can try to describe that shape. I hope I haven't left hanging those who shared the camino with me. I just need some time to regroup and think what I want to say about the experience. Maybe what I already wrote about--the day-to-day reality of walking--is what I'll end up having to say about it. I don't want to force a neat ending.

Monday, June 18, 2007

Rome is easy

Santiago, Rome, and Jerusalem -- the three big Christian pilgrimage sites. I won't get to the Middle East this time but the other two are on my Camino.

Flew into Rome last night. It's hot and sunny and Gianna and I have an apartment for a week in Trastevere, at the end of a dead-end street, right up against the botanical gardens. There's a lovely terrace where we eat fresh peaches and try out different cheeses. Then we wash our dishes in the bathroom sink.

This is my first time (as an adult) in Rome, and I'm so glad to be here with a quasi-native. Gianna knows the city and the language and can I just traipse after her, taking it all in.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Reentry is hard

I feel naked without a pack on my back, and I miss the simplicity of the camino. Every day you know what you have to do: walk, walk some more, then find a place to sleep and food to eat.

In this rainy city where locals have had it up to here with pilgrims, I have too much time on my hands. The energy I spent on walking now finds its outlet in obsessing about my life.

Being a pilgrim is easier, in some ways, than "real life."

I try to keep the rhythm and simplicity of the camino alive even now that I´m no longer walking. Sometimes I succeed.

A town with legs

As I walked the camino it started to seem to me like a small town with hundreds of feet. A town that moved through time and space at a walking pace.

Actually, there are many smalls towns moving along the route--yours is made up of the pilgrims traveling at about your speed. And as in any small town, you see the same people again and again. Your first impressions are often altered, sometimes dramatically, as you see someone first in one situation and then another.

The woman who at first so impressed you now seems like a bore who won´t let anyone else get a word in edgewise. And the man who speaks 6 languages and seemed a bit shifty now appears to be a perfectly nice guy who happens to have a wandering eye.

Dinner at the Hostal de los Reyes Catolicos

Across the Praza do Obradiro from the cathedral is the imposing Hostal de los Reyes Catholicos. The first stone was laid in 1501, on order of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel. They´d made the pilgrimage to Santiago and, deploring the state of the current pilgrim hostal, ordered another built.

The mammoth stone building, with several internal courtyards and it own chapel, opened to pilgrims in 1509. Like many hospitales of the time, it combined the functions of infirmary and lodgings. Guidelines written in 1524 specify that the hostal be open to all pilgrims and sick people, except those with contagious diseases such as leprosy or plague. Water was boiled for the sick, and each bed had a bell to summon the nurses.

From the day it opened, the hostal provided all pilgrims who could show a compostelana 3 nights free lodging and meals for those 3 days. They no longer offer the former (rooms now are over 200 euros a night) but they do provide food for the first ten pilgrims who show up for each meal--at 9 am, noon, and 7 pm, odd times to eat in Spain but perfect for the American palate. You don´t get to eat with the guests (the dining room charges 42 euros for a tasting menu), but you do get an impromptu tour of the inner workings of a luxury parador.

Last night I gathered with 8 other pilgrims at the entrance to the hostal´s parking garage, pressing up under the eaves to get out of the rain. At 7:05 the doorman appeared in a flurry of robes, counted us and perused our compostelanas, then gave a chit to one of us to present to the kitchen. We were led through the lobby of the hotel, past the elaborate chapel, through many stone courtyards (a wedding party had left behind rose petals in one of the fountains), up through the employee´s area, and into the enormous and cacophonous kitchen. We saw what the guests were to be served: plates of high-quality meats and cheeses, fine wines, crab and lobster and octopus.

We were given simple fare: green salad, meat and potatos, red and white wine, bread. Even the simplest meal in Spain must include wine. We took our meals on trays to a little room in the bowels of the hotel, where we had a great time trying to maintain a conversation in German, English, and Spanish. One guy from Madrid seemed more like a street person than a pilgrim; he smelled like he hadn´t showered in weeks, and his startled blue eyes made me think of some shell-shocked Viet Nam vets I´ve met. There were also two retired ladies from Asturias, who´d walked the Camino del Norte; one of them had had her boots stolen. The pilgrim-thief left behind her boots, full of holes and without laces.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Santiago de Compostela

June 16
0 km

After a good night´s sleep I began to see the beauty of Santiago de Compostela. I also needed a little time to absorb the idea that I had arrived, which means, of course, that my journey is over. And it just seemed to be getting started.

But this city is pretty amazing, the old section a warren of medieval ruas (Galician for streets), ruelas (lanes), travesas (alleys), prazas (plazas), and flights of stairs, most of it of cobblestone that turns a rich gray or gold when it´s wet, which seems to be most of the time. This city is rainy and cold--the hotels have radiators, and they´re on, even in mid-June.

Santiago is built on hills, so there are a lot of ups and downs and twists and turns as you explore. It´s easy to get lost and round a corner to see another church, a wide praza, or a tiny lane with pastelerias, shoe stores, and boutiques with expensive lingerie. Stumbled across the mercado de abastos, a complex of old stone stalls connected by soaring arched passageways, where merchants sell meat and poultry (saw some skinned rabbits, along with all sorts of pates), fruit and vegetables (beautiful mushrooms with the earth still clinging to them), bread and sweets. The pastelerias here are very tempting, especially when they´ve just taken out of the oven the fragrant torta de Santiago.

In a shop window I saw a little shield reading Santiago, with a design I hadn´t seen in any of the dozens of tourists shops selling camino mementos. The shopkeeper explained to me that it was the banner of the local soccer team.

"Are they good?" I asked.

"They´re bad," she smiled. "No, wait. They´re worse than bad. The manager was embezzling money and now they almost don´t exist anymore. They´re our shame," she shook her head, laughing.

My second pilgrim´s mass
This was the midday mass where I would be mentioned, by starting point and nationality at least, and so back I went to the cathedral, this time clean, well-rested, and without my backpack. I noticed a lot more this time around.

The main altar is the most elaborate and 3-dimensional I´ve ever seen, and is itself the size of a small church. It´s a riot of carved gilded angels, leaves and flowers, cherubim playing trumpets, rearing horses, shields, banners, and swords. It makes you think of the intersection of religious and military iconography, as do all the statues of saints and donors in other churches, each with a raised sword and the severed head of a vanquished Moor underfoot. You can tell they´re Moors because of their turbans.

Santiago on his throne has pride of place on the altar, with his halo looking like the sun going supernova. Throughout the mass you see the very odd sight of hands and arms snaking around Santiago from behind. Pilgrims wait in line to hug the saint, which they accomplish by climbing a set of stairs that takes them up inside the altar. So as the faithfull face the altar, seeing St. James from the front, the pilgrims are approaching him from behind, waiting their turn to embrace and thank and petition him.

It´s deliciously and alarmingly hands-on, and even lips-on, as pilgrim after pilgrim kisses Santiago´s bejeweled back (a germaphobe´s nightmare). There´s a priest stationed back there, casting significant glances at the box with a slot labeled limosnas (offerings), and making sure people don´t hug the saint too long or too hard.

Out in front, it´s standing room only, and some pilgrims have just arrived and still have their backpacks on. Pilgrims scan the crowd to see if they recognize anyone they met along the camino. Then there are hugs and kisses and congratulations. It´s like war buddies meeting up after they´ve made it past V-day.

Later, wandering and window shopping, it hit me how very modern and ancient this city is. It´s no museum--it´s vibrant and up-to-date, with free wifi for laptops in cafes and stylish women in lovely leather boots. But there is history everywhere, and from every era. Santiago was important to the Romans, too, and when they excavated part of the cathedral, they found a Roman cementary under one chapel and a temple to Zeus in another. When the cathedral was expanded significantly, in the 12th century, I think, it basically razed or consumed everything around it, and nearby churches became small chapels in the mammoth cathedral.

Watched a group of African drummers and dancers perform in the Praza de Toural. Ran into a Japanese woman who I´d talked religion with, aided by her hand-held computer of a Spanish-Japanese dictionary. Ate a kebob at a Kurdish place on the Ruela de Fuenterrabia.

I end up where I hoped to end up
Last night I stayed in a ho-hum hotel but tonight I have my reservation at the As Artes hotel (see photo of Where I Hope to End Up). I may even have the room in the photo! It´s the Isadora Duncan room, small but very cute, stone walls, wood floors, and a view not only of a the cathedral tower but also of a walled medieval-looking garden, with a magnolia tree and orderly rows of roses and fruit trees. There´s even a terrycloth robe in the closet, and a sauna downstairs.

I´m happy to be here and even happier to have walked at least part of the Camino. I´ll be making other entries as things come back to me, but the on-the-road entries are at an end, I´m afraid. Many thanks to those of you who came along with me--it was wonderful to be accompanied. Maybe you can take me along on your next adventure.

Friday, June 15, 2007

Day 13 -- Arca to Santiago de Compostela

17.5 km
Friday, June 15

I rode into Santiago de Compostela (St. James of the Field of Stars) on a wave of rain and fellow pilgrims. Since Km. 100 the number of pilgrims has swelled, the vibe on the camino has changed (not as much fellow feeling, more garbage and grafitti), and pilgrims seem anxoius to get to their destination. Those who´ve been walking five or six (or more) weeks are ready for it to end, while those doing the 100-km minimum are still fresh.

I had mixed feelings--both wanted to hurry to Santiago and slow it down so it wouldn´t end.

This last day was harder than I expected. The rain made me want to walk fast and keep my head down, and there were a lot of ups and downs on the trail. Plus I have blisters on the bottom of both feet, kept flat by a technique of sewing a piece of thread into the blister and leaving it there, so the ampolla can´t close up and fill again with liquid. It makes it so you can walk but it doesn´t feel great.

There were plenty of emotional ups and downs as well, as I approached the (supposed) reason for my pilgrimage, and as we made our way from an almost entirely rural camino to the heart of a mid-sized city with suburbs spreading out on all sides.

About an hour into this morning´s walk (about 7:30 am), I got a taste of what was to come. Walking uphill through a clearcut field, I heard a sound I hadn´t heard since Bilbao: a plane taking off. I was approaching Lavacolla, where medieval pigrims would wash and purify themselves before heading into Santiago, now the site of the city´s airport.

Soon I came across a field of black polyhedrons on tall metal poles, next to a candy-striped structure than looked like an open concrete parking garage without the horizontal slabs where the cars go. A hurricane fence cordoned off this futuristic Stonehenge, with signs reading Keep Out and Sensitive Area. It was like coming back into a civilization that I couldn´t read at all. I have no idea what these structures were. Then came a sign of civilization I know well: a traffic circle. Trucks and cars negotiated their turn under skies that had seemed a clean rainy gray but now seemed industrial.

There were still some meandering paths and rural lanes to walk down, but soon we were passing factories, suburbs, and even a tv station. I say "we" because I was hardly ever alone on the trail today. One person joked that the clumps of pilgrims were like the clumps of bicylists that form during bike races. Everyone seemed in a hurry; many of us were trying to make it to the midday pilgrim mass.

The Monte de Gozo (Mount of Joy), which used to give pilgrims their first glimpse of the cathedral towers, is now marred by a huge tourist/pilgrim complex, and the view down the valley to the cathedral is obscured by soviet-block style apartment buildings, construction cranes, and a snarl of freeways. It´s all part of the camino, I guess, a long haul through our beautiful and butt-ugly fallen world.

I made it to town in time for the midday pilgrim´s mass, where the priest reads off how many pilgrims from each country have arrived and applied for their compostelana, the certificate of completed pilgrimage. They mention starting points and nationality: From Roncevalles, 13 Germans, 7 French, 1 from Belgium, 2 from Puerto Rico, one from the United States, 3 from Madrid, 4 from Barcelona, etc. At the midday mass tomorrow I´ll be mentioned and I´ll see how many others arriving this afternoon and tomorrow morning began, like I did, in Astorga, and if any of the them are from the U.S.

It´s strange to be here, and I think it´s going to take some time to let it all settle in. I still have to go hug the saint (he´s only huggable in the mornings and late afternoons), but I did deliver my prayers, my own and everyone else´s, which was an emotional if not religious experience. When I think of the objects and prayers people entrusted to me, I feel very close to you all, almost as if you were here with me.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Day 12 -- Ribadiso to Arca

22 km
Thursday, June 14

I thought I´d be coming through fire (or at least heat) to get to Santiago. It turns out that the element I´m fighting these last days is water.

Galicia is so green because it is so very wet.

It rained all night, and then, unlike other days, the rain didn´t let up in the morning. Got help fastening my poncho and set out into the downpour at 7 am. There´s no choice--the albergue kicks you out at 8, and there was no accommodation of any kind for at least 16 km.

The rain poured down but people were speeding along the trail, horses getting near the barn, since we´re so close to Santiago now (tomorrow I´ll arrive). In our ponchos we looked like monks in muddy robes, army green, safety yellow, navy blue. My poncho is short and soon my legs were soaked, as were, eventually, my shoes and socks.

Next time: waterproof boots.

Next time: better rain gear.

You shut off part of yourself when you hike in the rain. The part that minds your feet feeling like bags of goldfish won at the county fair. Squish, squish, squish. The trail was a rocky dirt road, with streams running down the tire tracks. I sang Springsteen and Beatles songs as marching music.

I can show you
that when it rains and shines
it´s just a state of mind.


I didn´t stop for 4 and a half hours.

It cleared up about 3 hours in. Passed through eucalyptus groves, stands of pines, big oak trees. Past old women hoeing their rows of chard and onions. Past a miniature pony who pawed the mud and then rolled in it. Foxglove, dandylions, and queen anne´s lace along the path. A cool wet breeze.

The albergue in Arca is big but I got a good bed (no bunk) by the window, next to a 56-year old Chinese-American women from L.A. named Mei.

It feels like I just got started and tomorrow I walk into Santiago de Compostela.

I need to come back, do the entire Camino. Then do the other Caminos.

Day 11 -- San Xulian to Ribadiso

23.5 km
Wednesday, June 13

Cool (maybe 50 degrees) and cloudy all day, with a breeze that promised rain but didn´t deliver until about 3 pm, by which time I had my bunk at the albergue and was eating the banana and empanada de carne I´d bought earlier, in Melide, "an important small town known for its cheeses."

In Melide, halfway through my walking day, I ran into Miss South Africa of the cell phone charger, along with her more down-to-earth German friend. These girls are definitely the petty tyrants of my last few days. Though they have been taking the occasional cab and then lingering in places for more than one day, somehow our pace is similar and we keep seeing each other.

My pack still on, I perched on a plastic chair at their cafe table and we compared notes about recent days. They´d stayed at the Samos monastery the night I´d bailed. C., the German, told me that a pilgrim came in just under the wire (the albergues usually close their doors at 10 or 11pm), drunk out of his mind. He groaned and thrashed for a while, then toppled out of his top bunk and pissed himself on the floor. There was a mad scramble as people tried to help him and move their belongings away from the spreading yellow puddle. I told them about the giant toad of a man in Gonzar whose snoring had been so loud and wet that people sat up in their bunks, outraged, then moved into free bunks as far from him as possible.

Still not wanting to commit to taking my pack off, I told C. about my off-Camino experience, and how wrong it felt. She replied, ¨But isn´t that what the camino is all about? Adventure? Surprise? Doing exactly what comes, what you want?"

Maybe, and maybe not, but her reply made me realize that I´ve been alone too much, in my head, taking myself and my experiences too seriously. These petty tryrants remind me to lighten up (even if I don´t want to lighten up to their level of fluffiness).

Can´t get away from each other
We ended up in adjacent bunks that evening.

I asked the hospitalera if I could have the bunk by the window (not to get away from these girls, but because I wanted the breeze). She said no and told me pilgrims should do what hospitaleros want, not the other way around. "No quejas!" she told me. (Don´t complain!)

That wasn´t very pilgrim of you, said C., asking for another bunk. Didn´t you tell me that it was all about this heavy inner procedure?

You make it sound like I´m doing psychic surgery, I said.

I think you qualify there, she said.

Miss South Africa put in: At least she´s not one of the 60-something soul searchers.

That´s the privilege of the young, I said. Categorizing and judging.
(Though of course I do the same, and was in fact judging the judgers).

We are each other´s petty tyrants, and we can´t seem to get away from each other.

The next morning, we ended up at the same cafe table, as tentative as lovers who´d quarreled. We ajusted our behavior accordingly--I didn´t share my overwrought inner proceedings, and C., at least, was careful to demonstrate to me how she really wasn´t that judgemental.

¨We talked to this politcal refugee from Iran last night´," she told me. ¨M.(Miss South Africa) thought he was tragic, but I just thought he was really interesting."

And so we rub up against each others´rough edges, and adjust our behavior accordingly.

Fellow pilgrims of recent days

Brendan, 22ish, from Philadelphia, biking the Camino. He´s going to be a senior at Richmond University (the Spaniards at the albergue kept calling it Rich Man University), a private school that is funding his trip. He´s billed it as some sort of independent study, is interviewing pilgrims along the way, and will write a paper comparing medieval and modern pilgrims.

He looks like a young Steve Correl (is that the name of the guy in The 40-Year-Old Virgin and the U.S. version of The Office?) and did the most elaborate set of stretches I´ve seen yet before heading off on his bike in the morning.

He´s one of the few Americans I´ve met on the Camino and the only one I´ve spoken to at any length. We both speak good Spanish so when hanging out with others at the albergue in San Xulian we went with the current of Spanish. But on the margins--taking in our laundrey when the rain started; ordering a drink from the bar--we took small, almost guilty sips of purely American English--letting our words run together, loading our sentences with slang.

I´ve spoken English a fair amount on the camino, but almost always to people for whom it is a 2nd or 3rd language. So I enunciate clearly, speak slowly, and choose my words carefully. It felt so comfortable to run off at the mouth in my native tongue, knowing that no matter how fast I talked, I´d be understood.

Brendan had a xeroxed list of questions he was asking any pilgrim who´d sit still: name, country of origin, religious or spiritual orientation, whether or not they were planning to ask anything of St. James. In the sociable mellee before our communal dinner, he interviwed four or five Spaniards, one of whom (Josu from Bilbao) told me about the many caminos in Spain (more on that in another post). Also learned that you can ask Santiago for 3 things (like a genie), not the one wish I thought I´d be confined to. The world opens up...

Later, after dinner, I asked the interviewer one of his own questions: was he going to ask anything of Santiago?

"I´m Protestant," he said. "We don´t pray to saints. We don´t roll that way. We think saints are really cool people who died."

Heidi, 50ish, German, lived in Chicago for 5 years and also in China and Singapore. This is her second partial camino; she began this time in Sahagun. She´s walking with a friend of her son, a quiet young man who speaks only German.

Sipping wine before dinner, we both got a little tipsy, and she confessed to me that it wasn´t easy walking with this young man. His lack of experience and language skills made it like ¨traveling with a disabled person." She said the next time she does the camino she will surely do it alone. "Because you´re never really alone on the trail anyway."

Heidi and her disabled freind had been logging at least 30 km each day. She said she felt great, except at nights when her legs felt like they were on fire and she couldn´t sleep.

In Ligonde
A guy running a pilgrim way station in Ligonde, which was little more than a table outside of a cave-like dwelling, offering a stamp for your credencial and cups to catch the water coming out of a spout on the wall.

We spoke in Spanish until I asked him where he was from. Philadelphia, he said. He lived and worked in Madrid, and volunteered a couple of weeks each year to man this place.

“It gets me out of the city,” he said. “And the world comes to me.” He wore a sweatshirt that read Awe Ome Dad. The “S” had fallen off.

Day 10 -- Gonzar to San Xulian

20 km
Tuesday, June 12

On being under-guidebooked
Having been an editor and writer of guidebooks, I know how out of date, incomplete, random, and annoying they can be. They create blinders, advising you that this church but not another is worth a look, or telling you why you should be moved by a certain sight. Just as sometimes when I visit a museum I ignore the information cards and focus only on the art, I deliberately brought along on this trip very little in the way of guidance. No map, and just a few pages torn out of the British Confraternity of St. James guide, which, it turned out, was two years old.

That approach has been fine (and I´ve picked up many information sheets along the way, the most useful being a graph which shows the elevation gained and lost for each stretch of trail). When it backfires is when your scant information causes you to stop at Gonzar at noon when if you´d kept going there would have been many lovely options, not far away.

Oh well. Gonzar was a small price to pay for not being told, at every turn, what to see, how to feel, and where to stay.

But San Xulian was great. The small private Albergue o Abrigadoira was beautiful and well-run. There were cloth towels and although we only had bunks each had a pillow with a clean cotton pillowcase. Bed, breakfast,and the communal dinner cost 21 euros. Twelve or 14 Spaniards. 2 Germans, 2 Americans. Dinner conversation in rapid-fire Spanish. I´m back in the groove.

By the way, the people here really do speak their language, Gallego. it´s much more of a living tongue than is, say, Gaelic in Ireland. Galicia is said to be the cuña de Portugues (the cradle of the Portuguese language).

Good guides, modern and ancient
Many English speakers I run into swear by John Brierly´s A Pilgrim´s Guide to the Camino de Santiago: A Practical and Mystical Manual for the Modern Day Pilgrim. It has good route maps, small photos, charts that show gains and losses in elevation, and¨"mystical" as well as pratical advice. Examples of the former:
When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter. And as you see them you will see yourself.

Or, for the hard climb up to O´Cebreiro;
Higher places help lift us toward Higher Mind. At such heights, a wider perpective opens up to both the physical and inner eye. What do you see, feel, and hear from this elevated space? Does the silence and peace in your heart allow your inner voice to be heard?


It´s a little bigger than a map (and a lot thicker and heavier). It outrages my sense of economy and indpedence by having blank lined pages titled Reflections, but all in all, it looks like a good guide. Maybe I´ll carry it next time around.

But if you want to go back to the orginal camino guide, get a copy of the illuminated manucript titled the Codex Calixtinus, written in the 12th century by a French monk and much used by the pilgrims of that peak time. The pilgrimage was at its height from the 9th to the 13th century, fell off for a few centuries, then picked up again in the 18th and 19th century for Spainiards and the 20th century for the rest of the world. It may be at one of its peaks right now. A Spaniard who has walked most of the Caminos in Spain told me that 400 - 500 pilgrims pour into Santiago every day.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Camino graffiti

Scrawled in chalk on a churchyard wall on the way out of Sarria:

Hilde of Belgium
Thank for bein my camino
I love you
Javier from Mexico

A new plot

I´ve heard it say that there are basically two plots for a novel: An individual goes out into the world, and a Stranger comes to town.

Thinking of how it would feel to live in a town along the camino, I wonder if maybe there´s a third plot: Dozens and hundreds and thousands and millions of strangers come and then pass through town, day after day, year after year, century after century.

The point of view would be that of someone on the banks of a slow but inexorable river.

Day 9 -- Ferreiros to Gonzar

17.5 km
Monday, June 11

The pendulum swings
After stopping too late yesterday, I think today I stopped too early. But I´m playing it safe, halting at noon at fertilizer-scented, roadside Gonzar, though I could probably make it to the next town with ease. But I´m afraid of not getting a bed.

Portomarin, 9 km into my walk this morning, was a beautiful breezy place by a wide river, but I arrived there at 10 am, too early to end my walking day. Had a coffee and bocadillo on a balcony high above the lake, then called ahead to a private albergue in San Xulian to make a reservation for Tuesday night (I´m satrting to get wise, or at least prudent).

Saw two returnees on the trail today, a tiny Mexican woman walking with a very tall German man. The mexicana is only the 2nd Latin American I´ve encountered (not including Brazilians; there are a lot of them). The first was Andrea, Columbian but living in Australia. She and her Aussie boyfriend, Craig, were very friendly. He told me, as if offering me a gift, that on the Camino they´d been making more fun of Germans than of Americans. Imagine!

Meanwhile, I´m beginning to appreciate Germans more, and to feel kinship with them (and with South Africans). We all come from countries that precede us -- it´s as if we have a strike against us in the world community. Maybe for good reason, but still, it gets old to always be fielding that implied (and sometimes explicit) criticism.

Gonzar no es para gozar
I was first in line at the albergue and got my pick of bunks and hot water for my shower (it often runs out fast). But Gonzar is an unappealing place. Maybe it´s the trucks roaring by, or the stench of fertilizer and working dairies, or the lackadaisical attitude of the alberque-keepers, who fail to provide toilet paper and also run the only bar in town, so they have all pilgrims as their captive audience. At dinner we could choose from plato 1, eggs and french fries and chorizo, or plato 2, eggs and french fries and a pork chop. The women from Denmark chose option 3, coffee after coffee, brandy after brandy, and endless cigarettes. I don´t blame them.

The houses here are old and made of stone, with modern touches like aluminum windows and tin roofs. They´ve been shored up in places with bricks and cement blocks. But here the houses don´t seem charming; they just seem decrepit. The narrow main street is all dug up, and by the smell of it they´re having sewer line problems. Remnants of plastic feed and fertilizer bags litter the fields.

There´s some serious time-killing to do when you stop at noon in a no-horse town. Order a coffee, wait an hour, order a beer, sip it very very slowly, go for a walk, attend to your blisters, sit in the sun, read Daisy Miller in Spanish, order another coffee, go for another walk, make conversation or try to avoid it. Ok, now just two more hours to dinnertime.

Day 8 -- Samos to god knows where

around 19 km
Sunday, June 10

Canned tuna with stale bread for breakfast, canned tuna with stale bread for another trailside lunch, and canned tuna with stale bread for dinner in my room at a casa rural.

A day of poor planning and chance-taking, but I survived it, even though I couldn´t tell you where I am and it feels wrong to be off-Camino.

How I suffer for my blog
My mistake was to stop in Sarria at noon and spend 2 hours in an internet cafe. I was tired, and I thought a midday break would do me good. Also, my days were welling up in me and I needed to echarlos (get them out). I learned that use of echar from Jose Marti´s poem/song, Guantanamera:
Yo soy un hombre sincero
de donde crece la palma
y antes de morirme quiero
echarlos versos del alma

(I´m a simple man, from where the palm trees grow. And before I die, I need to get these damned rhyming couplets out of my head and onto paper. Or something like that.)

At 2 pm I emerged from my cibercave, shouldered my pack, and walked on. At the top of a long flight of stairs I saw the British woman I´d met in Ponferrada--she was sitting pretty at an outdoor cafe table. She´d rented a room nearby for 10 euros and said there were rooms still available. But I still had walking in me so I pushed on, up a street strewn with rose petals from that morning´s Corpus Christi procession and its lluvia de petalos, or rain of petals.

Rain in the afternoon, three days in a row
I walked through storybook woods with ferns and mossy rocks and fairies (though they hid from me). Out over open fields, waist-high grain and a tangle of wildflowers. It got hotter as the day wore on, and I would have liked to change into my shorts, but that would mean finding somewhere to change, taking off my pack, opening it up and finding my shorts, taking off my boots. Someone should invent pants that convert to shorts without you having to remove your boots. Oh, wait...

I got lost, took a track that wound along a stone wall and then petered out in the middle of a muddy field. By now it was almost 4, and the storm clouds were gathering. It had rained hard the previous two afternoons, but I thought I could get to Brabadelo just under the wire.

The rain began. I´m here to report that ponchos, at least those from Rite Aid on Geary at 17th, aren´t so great, especially if you´re trying to cover both yourself and your pack. It wouldn´t stay closed, and when the wind picked up I might have been flying a flag for all the rain protection it afforded.

I hit Brabadelo, only to learn that both albergues there were completo, full. Someone suggested a casa rural (kind of like a pension, usually in an historic house) up the road. But they, too were completo.

When the young woman at the casa rural told me that, I just stood there. She repeated the news, thinking I hadn´t understood. I´d understood. I just didn´t know what to do next. I was tired, it was raining, and the next town was 7 or 8 km away. I remembered that Dutch guy the first day telling me to forget the bed race, there´d always be a place for me. Except now there wasn´t.

The young woman asked me if I´d like her to call a señora from another casa rural, but this one a ways away, and not on the Camino.

How far would I have to walk? I asked.

She´d come and pick you up, was the answer.

She called the señora, and reported that the room cost 38 euros.

Se puede pagar con tarjeta de credito? I asked (Can I pay with a credit card?)

No, but the señora will also drive you to the nearest cash machine.

On one hand this seemed like a generous offer. On the other hand maybe the señora preyed on stranded pilgrims and would put me up in a dank cellar. No matter; I had no choice.

Waiting for the señora to arrive, I sat in the dining room, where a group of Germans had just left the remnants of a big meal--many courses, wine, coffee, after-dinner drinks. One brandy snifter still had an inch or so of amber liquid in it. That golden inch was like the brightest thing in the room. I stared at it for a while before sneaking over and tipping back the last of it. It burned the damp right out of me.

The señora arrived in a spray of gravel. She put my pack in the trunk of her car, and we were off. It felt strange to be riding in a smoke-impregnated Alfa Romeo, the señora in gold jewelry talking a mile a minute. She took the curves fast and barely concealed her impatience when I couldn´t find a word in Spanish. The peace and quiet that had been gathering in me, earned step by step on the camino, seemed to now be draining out, like a car leaking oil.

Her casa rural was a 17th century farmhouse that had been the family for generations. The entryway smelled of wet dog and saddle leather. My room was not a room but a suite: stone walls, low beamed ceilings, heavy drapes framing windows that looked out over open fields, a luminous green under dark gray clouds. But the place was also a little gloomy and uncared for, with dust bunnies, daddy long legs, and dead potted plants.

And although it was beautiful, I didn´t want to be there. It felt wrong to be off-Camino, as if I´d lost the thread of a productive conversation I´d been having with myself. Being off-camino feels off-base, off-topic. Before, even when I´ve stayed in a hotel, it has been within sight of the camino. I realize now how important it is to not veer from the path.

In the morning, I met a group of Italians who were walking the last 100 km to earn the Compostela. They will walk around 20 km a day with day packs, and each afternoon they´ll be picked up in a van and returned to a luxurious casa rural. I´m trying not to judge other people´s camino, but it´s hard. The señora drove me and two other stranded walkers (a chain-smoking pair of Danish women) and we all agreed that it was a great relief to be back on the camino.

Samos

Saturday, June 9
A lovely walk from Triacastela to Samos. It´s a detour off the main camino so there are fewer people and it seems less trammeled. In places it wasn´t so clear which way to go, but I made my way, mostly along the Rio Sarria, the path muddy from last night´s rain. Ferns crowded the camino, stone walls were almost obsured by moss and vines.

There´s only one bar along the way (Bar Charly) where you can have a coffee or a sandwich. I wasn´t hungry then but an hour or so later I was famished, not having eaten anything all day except cafe con leche and tostados (toast).

Thank god for my little tins of tuna. I strayed off the path, lay my poncho on the damp rocky ground, and ate from my pull-top can with the broadest blade on my Swiss army knife. Heaven! There´s nothing like simple but profound needs (like hungar) met.

Arrived in Samos around 2 pm, a beautiful town along the banks of a clear-running river, along which geese amble and cows graze. The town is dominated by an enormous Benedictine monastary, founded in the 6th century, which also houses the town´s albergue. I waited in line with the other pilgrims for the place to open, then filed in, hoping for a bottom bunk. I got one, but as I felt the damp mattress cover, smelled the funk of my fellow pilgrims, and saw that the only windows were very small and high, I quailed (is that a word?). There were wonderful celtic-knot style designs painted on the wall (I got pictures, some of the last before my camera battery went dead), and on one hand I wanted to stay at the monastery. But as people lined up for the few showers, and a man claimed the bunk a few inches from mine, I thought I might bail and go look for a pension.


The brother who stamped our credenciales and signed us in was very nice, saying if I just wanted to rest on the bunk and then head out, that was fine. But I was itching to go, and I shouldered my pack and walked along the road until I found the Hotel a Veiga, where I have a great room overlooking the river and a stand of chopos, impossibly tall and slender and elegant trees that may be poplars. In my room are crocheted doilies, someone´s first communion photo, a big firm bed, a bidet, and a big sink where I washed some clothes with hotel shampoo. All this for 24 euros.

The hotel also had a big comedor (dining room) overlooking the river. I dispensed with the usual meu del dia or menu del pegregrino--course after mediocre course--and ordered a la carte. A green salad (not the ensalada mixta, which they load up with onions, hard-boiled egg, canned tuna, and tinned white asparagus). Just lettuce and tomato (I´d walked by some beauitful lettuces in a row earlier, and had to stop myself from stealing them Peter Rabbit-like). When they brought a caddy to the table with the salad, it contained oil, vinegar, salt, and a delicious ground red pepper. I also ordered fried calamares and a glass of Bouza do Rei Albariño white wine (8 euros the bottle, 1.5 for a glass). The meal was simple, the wine excellent, and I was very, very happy.

By the way, that Bierzo white I had in Ponferrada must have been off, because I´ve had Bierzos since and they´ve been fine, if unassuming--crisp, with a hint of sweetness. But this Albarniño was really delicious. It tasted of not having to stay in the monastery.

Went to vespers at 7:30, with 15 monks singing, trying to fill the cavernous gothic church. Thunder and lightening came and the rain poured down hard, audible on the roof hundreds of feet up. Mass was at 8 and most pilgrims who came for vespers planned to skip out before mass, but the rain held us hostage, clustered in the damp church entrance (kind of like a mud room), hoping it would let up. Some people gave up and went back in to mass, but I stripped down to my tank top, bundled my clothes and held them against my chest, and sprinted outinto the rain and back to the hotel.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

To die trying

Through the pilgrim grapevine you hear about people who´ve died recently on the Camino. The two struck by lightening near Leon, the man who died of cold in the Pyrannees, another who died of heat stroke. These people probably didn´t come to die, but there are people I meet on the trail who I could swear give off a cold whiff of the grave. I wonder if these people have come to walk themselves to death.

Last night at dinner I sat next to a 75-year-old German man whose hands shook so badly I had to help him to his meat and potatoes. He may be as healthy as I am apart from the tremor, but I wonder. Today, walking along the Rio Sarria, I met Eleanor from Ireland, who´d "just had a brain tumor out." Who knows what the prognosis is, but she was moving so slowly I thought it might take her months to get to Santiago.

Last night, I heard a German man say that if you have to die, the Camino is a good place to do it. "You get a marker with your name on it, and thousands of pilgrims will pass by and see you there. They´ll know you died trying to get to Santiago."

Walking today I thought about how even if you don´t come to the Camino to die, most people are hoping for a little death. We´re hoping to kill off parts of ourselves, at the very least--decaying parts that no longer serve us well but keep hanging on, like old skin. We come to shed old skins. To come through the heat of midday and the blister-fire. To emerge burned down to our essence.

Day 7 -- Fonfria to Samos

June 9
18 km

Ode to my boots
Tevas are to boots as a thong is to a girdle. Give me the girdle--I need the support! I´m back in my boots, and I love it. I feel like a walking tree. The boots make short work of mud, rocks, and steep inclines. As I walked out this rain-washed morning, I had not one god but two: my left boot and the right.

No room at the inn
By 3 pm yesterday the Albergue da Reboleira was packed to the rafters. They were turning people away, even though it´s the only albergue in town. Some pigrims were allowed to pitch their tents or lay down sleeping pads in the garage.

It was hard to see pilgrims turned away as the rain began. The water ran in torrents off the roofs, made up of rounded pieces of slate that look like fish scales. The narrow street became a stew of mud, straw, and cow dung. The German shepards, off duty now, looked for shelter under eaves.

But the pilgrims had to keep going, and the closest town was Triacastela, 20 km down the muddy mountain.

People were grumbling that the albergue was letting non-pilgrims take up valuable bunk space. In municipal albergues, only pilgrims can stay, and it´s first come first served. Private albergues can do whatever they want, and often allow reservations and accomodate tourists. It was galling to see the woman in the bunk next to me with a suitcase instead of a backpack (she´d come by car), when walkers were turned away.

But I did happen on this albergue on the right night. Once a year they celebrate the Fiesta del Peregrino, and they made all 50 or 60 of us a free dinner of many delicious courses, beginning with a plate of embutidos (cold cuts, with many kidns of chorizo and ham) and ending with torta de Santiago, a moist almond cake.

Regulating the Camino
This morning, sipping coffee and talking with the young South African woman about the albergue situation, she had a proposal:

¨They should have a computer system that links all the albergues on the camino. There should be only 3 or 4 places where you can officially start your pilgrimage, and they should regulate the number of people they allow on the Camino. That way everyone would be guaranteed a place to sleep."

This idea comes courtesy of a pilgrim who pays to have her pack transported from albergue to albergue, and who has a manner oddly imperious for someone so young and not in keeping with the usual demeanor of pilgrims. Lounging on her bunk last night, she motioned over an Italian man now living in Germany. "I forget you name," she said, "but could you do me a favor? Could you take my cell phone and plug it into that outlet across the room?"

The man looked at me, and I made a crack about the princess in her tower. But he took her phone and did what she asked. "Don´t forget to make sure the red line comes on," she called after him.

Her proposal at breakfast seemed like such a classic example of an outsider coming in with misguided ideas of order and then mucking everything up (not to mention a misunderstaing of the inherent and necesssary messiness of something like a pilgrimage)that I had no answer for her.

Later, walking in the Galician mist, I thought of a reply. "You know how some parts of the camino are steep and rocky, and some people fall? They should eliminate the danger by having pilgrims ride elevated tramways over those sections."

Day 6 -- Ruitelan to Fonfria

June 8
22 km

Quite a climb today, but Oh! what a view from the top (about 1300 meters, At O! Cebreiro). Mountain range upon mountain range, the closest bright green with accents of yellow from flowering shrubs, the farthest a distant blue.

I probably should have stopped earlier today. There were a lot of difficult ups and downs, and I did most of it in Tevas. But you get into a rhythm and you don´t want to stop. The walking is addictive. At times it feels like the pack on my pack (or something at by back), far from weighing me down, is pushing me forward. I hear from other pilgrims that they´ve experienced something similar. Some call it the wind at their back and some think it´s something more mystical.

Before I describe the day´s walk I want to sing the praises of the private hostal in Ruitelan. Run by two men who laughed and exchanged significant glances when I asked if they were brothers, this albergue is intimate and friendly. There were about 20 of us, and besides sleeping cheek to jowl we all ate dinner family-style, the best meal I´ve had on the Camino. Cream of carrot soup, green salad with fresh mozzarella, spagetti carbonara, red wine, and a delicious egg custard (natilla) for dessert.

I sat with the Italians and a young woman from South Africa. She´d just come from 3 months of studying yoga in India, and after the Camino was taking a bike tour through Portugal. She seemed at loose ends, tripping from one peak experience to the next. But she was the youngest at the table, maybe 23, so I guess she has the right.

I slept so well in my non-bunk bed that I didn´t hear the Pavoratti blasting at 6 am, and awoke to an empty bunkhouse. Not even taking time to brush the sleep from my eyes, I ran downstairs to get the last of the coffee and tostadas con miel (this area in known for its dark and flavorful honey).

Today´s route
The Camino meandered through Las Herrerias and Hospital Ingles. Bands of feral cats had colonized ruined stone houses, giving off a smell of litter box time twelve. The route pitched seriously upwards towards La Faba, on a steep, rocky path shaded with chesnut trees. La Faba was a hilltop cluster of stone houses shrouded in mist, which soon cleared to reveal great views along the now-open (no overhanging trees) trail.

In Laguna de Castilla I saw my first castro, a round stone hut with thatched roof. We´re in Galicia now, with its Celtic culture, and the castros look like something you´d see in Ireland, as do the emerald green sloping fields bounded by stone walls. The place smelled like woodsmoke, fresh cow dung, and damp earth.

It started to drizzle, and pilgrims stopped under trees to break out the ponchos and pack covers. But the rain stopped almost as soon as it started, and I was fine with my long´sleeved white nylon button-down shirt, which dries fast and is also good protection against the sun.

This area is pretty poor, and most young people go to some nearby city to look for work. The villages are populated with middle aged and older people. If you come across a teenager or young adult they seem peeved to have been left behind with the fogies. And there are more women than men--you see women working the small vegetable plots, herding the sheep and cows (with the help of German Shepards), or tending the only bar in town. I heard some German pilgrims talking about how when Spain joined the EU (now the EC), they got a lot of money to bring their infrastucture up to the level of the other countries in the Community. So what you have around here are excellent roads but nobody to drive them.

O Cebreiro was a different story. A hilltop hamlet of 20 ancient stone houses, it has become very touristy, with shops selling pilgrim paraphernalia (hats, t-shirts, staffs, and the ubiquitious scallop shell painted with Santiago´s red cross) and Celtic gewgaws. Odd to see jewelry and the like sporting colorful Celtic knots like the ones in the Book of Kells and all over Ireland. One tourist shop piped bagpipe music out into the cobblestoned street. A tourist in high heels and silk shawl was wearing a pilgrim´s scallop shell around her neck, oblivious to the outraged stares of real pilgrims.

Liñares was a roadside anomoly--instead of being clustered aorund the usual stone church, the town had at its center a garage specializing in the repair of farm equipment. Bright green and red farm machinery, looking like modern torture implements, littered the fields. A few young bucks (probably mechanics at the garage) tore up the camino on All Terrain Vehicles, leaving clouds of dust for the pilgrims ot breathe.

In Fonfria I´m at the Albergue da Reboleira. Arrived around 3 pm to snag one of the last bunks. Splurged on a massage by a Catalan woman who also tends bar at the albergue. Pilgrim special: 15 euros for 35 minutes. The massage table was a door draped in an old blanket in a room so close to the bar I could hear clinking glasses and the French Open on tv. But it felt great, especially when she rubbed lavender-scented oil into my feet.

Now it´s pouring down rain, with thunder and lightening. So glad I´m not out on the trail.

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Day 5 -- Villafranca del Bierzo to Ruitelan

Thursday, June 7
19 km


Good to be walking again. The Tevas are ok--my feet feel sort of naked and floppy, but I´m moving, and that´s the important thing. Hippocrates said that walking is the best medicine, and I think that´s true--even when your feet hurt.

From Villafranca there are apparently 3 routes to choose from--2 high, 1 low. The 2 high routes add on 2 and 13 km respectively, and they climb close to 500 meters and then come back down. Yesterday afternoon, sans pack, I scouted the routes out of town. The high routes head for Pradela, and the beginning of that route was so steep I was slipping all over the beds of my Tevas.

Bootless and not at the top of my game, I decided on the low route, even though most of it is along the old highway N-VI. A new highway siphons off most of the traffic, but this is still very much a road. The first few km you´re on a narrow blacktop with very little shoulder, disconcerting when big tour buses bear down on you.

Soon, the Camino had its own band of concrete, separated from the road by a waist-high concrete barrier. The morning was cool and the road shadowed the Rio Valcarce. Signs nailed to trees read Coto do Caza (Hunting Reserve) and Coto de Pesca (Fishing Reserve). Also saw a lot of signs that said Tramo Libre Sin Muerte, which confounds me (Freeway without Death?) (Just found out the sign is for fishermen and means Catch and Release.)

I saw only one other pilgrim along this stretch (most took the higher, more scenic route), a man with grizzled beard heading east, away from Santiago. In place of the traditional scallop shell on his pack there hung a miniature teddy bear, missing half its stuffing and looking like it had been to hell and back again, much like the man.

The high and low routes meet up at Trabadelo, 10 km from Villafrance, then the Camino heads to Portola, again along the highway. Right before Portola the old highway hits the new one, and you pass by the enormous Hotel Valcarce, with tourist shops and big buses disgorging daytrippers.

I hit Portola at 11:15, and as I´d started at 8:15 that means I walked 10 km in 2 hours, not bad for a semi-cripple in Fred Flinstone shoes. Stopped at a bar for their toilet and for a cafe con leche and a bolillo con tortilla frances (an omelette sandwich). Tasted very very good. It seems that about every 3 km or so you can get a coffee or small meal or at least buy a bottle of water.

Made it to Ruitelan around 1:30, and I´m here at the Refugio, really glad to have my pack and boots off. My skirt and flipflops are proving very useful at Refugios, when I need to pare down as much as possible for my trip to the showers. Left my beloved Dr. Bronners soap and my shower glove (there are never any washclothes) in Ponferrada, so I´m carrying a small slimy sliver of hotel soap.>
When I arrived the hostelero showed me to a cramped room with 3 bunks, the bottom 3 already occupied. I felt the upper bunks, hemmed and hawed, then finally asked the hostelero if there were other rooms where I might get a bottom bunk (hard to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night if you´re sleeping in a top bunk). He led me to the hot but utterly charming attic room, where I got a bed in the corner near the door to the terrace. Just perfect, and no one above me. The only nonbunk in the place. Rinsed out my socks and will soon head into town to see what´s there. Very little, I imagine, but I´m glad to be here. Thanks to those who are commenting--it´s good to hear fróm you.

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Villafranca del Bierzo

This is a very cool (though hot) little town (3000 people) in the foothills of the Ancares mountains, between Leon and Galicia provinces. It´s small enough to walk around in half an hour, and big enough to have hotels, banks, bars, pharmacies, internet, and two good albergues up on the hill when you first come into town: the municipal one, and a private one called Fenix, in a very old building and very idiosyncratic and charming. I forgot to mention that on this stretch of the trail (and in Galicia, I think), albergues are mostly free, with donations encouraged but not insisted on.

This has got to be the most beautiful internet experience I´ve had--upstairs from a bar, in front of an open leaded glass window that looks out on a park with shade trees and rose bushes, I type away (and download photos--previous entries now have some photos), while sipping a clara (beer with lemonade). Out in the park, pilgrims sit in the shade and massage their feet.

Maybe because I didn´t walk today, I had the energy to hobble around looking at churches. The 13th century Iglesia de San Francisco was founded by St. Francis when he was on his way to Santiago as a pilgrim. The church has an amazing mudejar ceiling with star-shaped arabic designs. Also there´s the 12th century church of Santiago, with its Puerta de Perdon, or Door of Pardon, where pilgrims too ill to continue on to Santiago would be blessed and released from their duty to go further. I asked the door for pardon but it didn´t answer. There´s also the Castle of the Marquis de Villafranca, the only inhabited castle in the Beirzo region. You can´t look inside because its someone´s house.

Mañana, a Galicia!

Day 4 -- Ponferrada to Villafranca de Bierzo

Wednesday, June 6
22.5 km -- on the bus

The Walking Wounded
Patricia, of the broken arm and the bashed-up face, was only the beginning. Every pilgrim I meet is struggling with minor ailments, usually blisters or shin splints or swollen ankles or knee problems. A good chunk of them are also dealing with more serious issues, often having to do with falls. A bicylist I spoke with at the albergue in Ponferrada last night had skidded on gravel and badly scraped one side of his body. A British woman walking alone had tumbled down a hill and was all bruised and battered. A Belgian woman was sweating out a fever in the albergue, but didn´t want to take any medicine. On an even more serious note, Patricia told me that three people died on the Camino the first week she was walking. Two were struck by lightning on the open plain near Leon. How the third died I don´t know.

I take my place among the walking wounded. My complaints are minor but they kept me from walking today. The steep descent the last few days pushed my foot against the end of my boot and my litle toe is raw, at the end, on the underside, and between it and the next toe. It seems like a small thing but I can´t put on my boot or even my tennis shoe without excruciating pain. I´ve tried many kinds of bandages--compeed, moleskin, gauze with tape, tape alone--and it doesn´t help. There´s nothing like spending 20 minutes on dressing a wound only to have the bandage fall off in five minutes.

I was going to stay an extra day at the enormous hostal in Ponferrada (capacity 160), which is a sort of de facto pilgrim hospital, being in the only town around where you can get medical attention. It´s also the only alberque I´ve seen that allows stays of more than a day if you need to recover before moving on.

It´s run by a big ruddy German couple who at first seemed brusque but are actually soft touches who let those who need to linger for days. They even have a doctor from the Red Cross come in every afternoon to give pilgrims advice about sprains, strains, and fractures, and help people drain and dress their blisters. The state of people´s feet is truly atrocious--I don´t know how some of these people keep walking. One guy´s heel looked like an onion, it had so many layers of skin hanging off it. Blisters are definitely the hair shirts and barbed whips of the modern pilgrim. Did pilgrims in the middle ages get blisters, or is it all our modern equipment that gets us into trouble?

At any alberque what people are doing is attending to their feet and writing in their journals. I bet a good chunk of the people I see have blogs too. When people aren´t talking about the spiritual side of the Camino they´re comparing notes on foot care. Everyone has their theories. Many swear by what is basically greasing your feet. One French guy who´d already walked 1000 km said he used ¨pilgrim´s balm¨ on his feet and he hadn´t had one blister (I got the sense that it was kind of like Bag Balm). One of the South African crew, a long-limbed beauty who wears short shorts, is always rubbing cream into her feet. The other day she revealed to me that it was actually very expensive face cream that she´d brought along but was now using on her feet, them being more important than preventing wrinkles, at least for the next few weeks.

People routinely share foot care supplies, and last night my bunkmate Anka (so many Ankas, Ingas, Brigittes, and Hildas) from Bavaria helped me dress my feet and was shocked by the paucity of my supplies. I don´t even have any antiseptic spray, which was a real oversight. I also have no compeed, blister dressings which as many swear by but which I didn´t find before leaving (I should have looked harder).

The Riding Wounded
This morning I went to the only outdoor equipment shop in town (and probably for hundred of miles around) and bought a pair of heavy duty Tevas for a shocking 90 Euros. Here I was lampooning convertible pants and I´ll be walking in Tevas with socks. The Camino makes me swallow my pride. The Tevas allow me to walk (they don´t press on my little toe), though not easily. I still have arch problems (I have high arches, and no shoes have enough support) and pains up the side of my shins (is that shin splints?), so I took the day off, taking a 30-minute bus ride from Ponfrerrada that was so comfortable I didn´t want it to end. Tomorrow I will try to cross the mountains into Galicia in Tevas.

From Villafranca de Bierzo (where I am right now) to O Cebreiro you go from about 500 meters to around 1300. But like the mountains I just came over, this is supposed to be a beautiful stretch of Camino.

If you have to bus it at any point, between Ponferrada and Villafranca de Bierzo is not a bad choice. The Camino here goes through a rather hot (33 C today), heavily settled valley, and for much of the way you´re actually walking along the highway. I know because as I was sitting in the air-conditioned bus, we sped by scores of pilgrims.

I felt bad but it was either that or stay in Ponferrada and lose a day, which I can´t really afford to do time-wise, having to make a flight out of Santiago.

Bad pilgrim of the day
Me. For my cranky lack of charity in the last few days, and for my pride, which told me I could power through even as other pilgrims fell by the wayside. I am having my comeuppance, and I´m having to adjust my plan. I´m also realizing that every pilgrim has to do the same--adjust to injuries or scale back their ambitions. Of course some do power through, doing 30 or 40 km a day and never being brought low by injuries. These are the people you see once and then never see again. But the rest of us, struggling along, see other again and again.

And of course I keep running into Nola/Passion, whom I judged so harshly and who I am beginning to like. Maybe she´s my lesson. I judge her then have to judge myself just as harshly, then maybe I am compassionate with her and can also have some compassion for myself. HP, what is the term Carlos Casteñeda uses for a person who both plagues and teaches you?

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Day 3 -- Riego de Ambros to Ponferrada

Tuesday, June 5
12 km

There is nothing as delicious as a good night´s sleep when you really need it. A bed with real sheets, in a room with no one else. Heaven! And a tiny bathroom all to myself. Of course you have to sit sideways on the toilet, but who´s complaining. And a view of the mountains almost as spectacular as the one from yesterday´s trail break.

Everything looks brighter today. I even saw Nola/Passion and her lot on the trail and thought, they´re all probably nice people. Why begrudge them their silly names?

But my feet and legs. Man oh man. Not doing so good. The blisters are no better or worse, but the very structure of my feet feels overburdened. The arches feel ready to fall. There are pains running up the outside of each calf. And the blisters are now making me limp, which in turn causes pains in other parts of my legs. I´m a wimp. Others walk 30 or 40 km a day and they´re fine.

There is definitely a lot of competition among pilgrims. Everyone wants to know where you started and how far you´ve walked today, and they like to tell you how far they´ve come and look! no blisters. Last night, having dinner with the Gallego and the Brazilian, he asked me why I didn´t push on to the next town, as they were going to do.

I´m tired, I said.

How far did you walk, he wanted to know.

When I told him 20 km (which I was kind of proud of), he snorted in derision and told me that he and his muy mujer Brazilian were doing more than 30 km a day.

And today, only 12. What can I say? You´ve got to do the Camino your way, and right now I´m in pain. Plus I needed internet. All the towns I´ve been walking through have had 10 to 50 full-time residents. I´m now in Ponferrada, which is huge at about 130,000, I think. It´s also hot here. Or rather, the sun is very strong. The temperature itself doesn´t seem so high but you simply have to get yourself out of the sun, especially at midday.

Also wanted to get something decent to eat, but failed there. Eating here is such a pain I often find myself having peanuts and raisens for dinner. And it´s expensive. This morning had a nice simple bolillo--crusty bread, serrano ham--a glass of oj, and coffee. 8 euros.

Did manage to try my frist glass of the white wine of the nearby Bierzo region. The taste was so startling I exclaimed out loud, causing those at nearby tables to look up. It has fumes like a medicinal liquer or maybe a cognac, mixed with a sharp clean taste. Truly weird. Like no wine I´ve ever drunk. Don´t know if this wine was bad or this is how the wine tastes here. I´ll have to do more research.

This may be the last internet for a while.

I miss you all so much!

Day 2 -- Rabanal de Camino to Riego de Ambros

Monday, June 4
21.5 km

The damage
Two small blisters on my left baby toe. Legs ok.

The good
This is a beautiful stretch of country. Small mountains or large hills, depending on your persective. The trail became a real trail (rather than a gravel road), with rocks and mud and bordered with wildflowers. Lots of green; ancient stone houses falling into ruin or shored up for current use. Makeshift barbed wire fence: thorns massed on top of a stone wall. Cherubic calves toddle after glossy-coated mothers.

The weather has been perfect. Cool in the mornings (I wear my light fleece jacket for the first few hours), warm at midday, never really hot, and no rain. I´ve yet to put on my shorts. The days are long--the sun sets at 10 pm and it´s light another 30 minutes. Most pilgrims are asleep before sunset, since they get up so early and are so exhausted by the walking.

The not-so-good
Feeling very unCamino today. Irritability rules, probably because I´ve been getting so little sleep in the communal dorms. A symphony of snoring serenades you into non-sleep. At dawn, after a night of tossing and turning and your bed shaken every time your bunkmate rolls over, a pair of cropped-hair heifers talk and laugh at midday volume as the rest of the bunkhouse pulls sleeping bags over heads.

Where were you raised? I want to call out in the dim light. A barn?
But I know where these creatures were raised--in Germany. Did I say that English was the primary language on the Camino? I was wrong. It´s German, German, and more German. Ich, ach, ich, ach. If I have to listen to a language I don´t understand, please, let it be French.

Bad pilgrim of the day award
Nola, in her vigorously evil prime. In the bed race yesterday afternoon, she pushes ahead, snarling that she needs a bottom bunk because her feet are bleeding. She´d almost been refused entry into the albergue; there was some question as to whether or not she´d carried her own pack (most albergues give first preference to pilgrims with packs; bicyclists and walkers who get their packs transported get whatever beds are left, and usually that means no bed at all in a small hostal; these people often stay in pensiones or hotels or they camp). But Nola bullied her way past the sweet Brits who run the Refugio Guacelmo in Rabanal de Camino, a lovely old stone building that was the parish priest´s house (see photo). There´s a nice garden, a kitchen, and facilities to wash your clothes (sun-dry).
After being such a pill last night, this morning Nola is cheery and wants to tell me all about her trip. She´s with a group of 12 from South Africa, led by a very spiritual man who has walked the Camino 5 times. The group devotes an hour a day to breath work, healing, and shamanistic ritual.

She looks at me piercingly. "Do you know what I´m talking about?"

I´m from California, I want to say, ground zero of all that shit. "Yes, I know what you´re talking about."

Now who am I, with my pre-Camino visit to a healer and my tear-stained epiphany at 12:30 mass, to judge Nola? But judge I do, and I judge even harder when I meet another member of the group who tells me Nola should be introducing herself as Passion. They´ve all taken new names for the Camino. This second woman is Empress.

Call me old fashioned, but shouldn´t the journey be about getting to know who you are, rather than pretending you´re the Empress?

I could write a book
Oh wait, dozens of people already have. Daniel yesterday told me about a Dutch atheist who walked the Camino backwards, starting in Santiago. Seeing the oncoming traffic all the way. He wrote a book about it. Maybe it´s called Santiago is Not Great (and His Pilgrims are a Real Pain).

The Camino is ripe for an epic lampooning. Someone to do for this era´s pilgrims what Chaucer did for medieval pilgrims in The Cantabury Tales. But it ain´t me. I want to be more generous with my fellow pilgrims. Maybe tomorrow.

Speaking of books, I heard that there´s a bestseller in Germany right now, written by a comedian, that talks a lot about the Camino. That´s one of the reasons so many Germans are walking right now, theorized someone whose name I can´t remember. When Brazilian author Paulo Coelho published The Pilgrim, the Camino was mobbed with Brazilians for a while. You still see Albergues do Brasil.

Still cranky
On the trail, I was still cranky. So many pilgrims! Crumpled tissues and cigarette butts on the side of the trail. Daytrippers (their luggage in a van)in designer sunglasses, nary a day pack to be seen. The trail today paralleled the road much of the route, so I also got to see the hordes of bicylist pilgrims.

My Hola and Buen Camino started to get stuck in my throat. I worried about very unspiritual things, like whether the out-of-office automated email reply I´d set up would create a chain reaction that would bring down western civilization. Can´t change it from here, it seems.
Hit the Cruz de Fierro, an important landmark, at 11 am or so. Dimestore gewgaws taped to a pole (see photo) that happens to have a horizontal piece near the top. But I tried to get in the mood, meditating on the rock my brother gave me to leave here. I did manage to find the perfect place for it, right near a rock with a lizard painted on it. I felt I´d delivered it well, so that buoyed me up a bit. And I found a good place for my own personal dimestore gewgaw--the E key from my old iBook.

Enough is enough
Walking on, I said, Enough with this irritability. Am I a woman or a wren? I left Camino, striking out cross country, and found a perch out of site of the Camino with an amazing mountain view (see photo).
The bees wanted to drink my sweat but after they´d had their fill they left me alone. Ate an orange and thought of Yosemite, the trail from Lower Ottaway Lake to Red Peak Pass. The walk I´d just done was not as steep but much longer. On my way down now--easier on the lungs, harder on the legs.

Getting off the Camino and taking a break did me a world of good. Later, back on the trail, I saw very few people (most walk mornings, and it was now about 1 or 2). I din´t worry about finding a bed for the night.
Passed El Acebo (see photo), where a flock of goats was coming up the narrow street, the billies mounting the nannies and the whole lot of them smelling even worse than a pilgrim´s socks.

Sprung for a pension (20 Euros) in Riego de Ambros. Washed out some clothes, scrubbed the dust off myself, then went out and found the only restaurant in town. A couple at the next table invited me to join them. He Gallego and she Brazilian. In her pack she carries high heels, a black low-cut dress, and an "intimate ensemble" in leopard print.

"Es muy mujer," says her beau. He carries a stove and olive oil.

They met in Minas Gerais 7 years ago, and have walked the Camino every year since.

Day 1 -- Astorga to Rabanal de Camino

Sunday, June 3, 2007
21 km today
Finally, the crunch of the Camino under my boots. Flowers release their scent into the cool of the morning. Across the fields, you can see the red roofs and church tower of a small town.

It´s hard to sleep late at an albergue. This morning people were up at 5:30 am, packing their bags and calling out in a stage whisper, "Nieves! Donde estas?!" Breakfast wasn´t until 6:30, but I got up anyway and talked for a while to the hostelero, a Scottish man named Skye was was volunteering to run this rather large establishment. He told me about his favorite albergues along the road, and said he´d walked the Camino de Plata (which comes from the south) in the heat of midsummer.
What did you wear? I asked
Very little, he said.

I left around 7:30 -- everyone has to be out by 8 am, and then they open again in the afternoon,usually around 2 pm. A little woman walking with two big poles was passing as I came out of the hostal and together we found our way out of Astorga. There are usually yellow arrows or scallop shell signs but occasional it´s hard to tell which way to go.

There were a dozen and a half pilgrims leaving town at about the same time, and for a the first 30 minutes, we were all sort of clumped together. Then we each found our own rhythm (some singles, some in groups), and became strung out along the trail. At first the Camino paralleled the road and even at points coincided with it (cars sped by), but at Murias de Rechivaldo, it struck out across open fields and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Lots of wildflowers in bloom, and a sound like crickets. At El Ganso (The Goose), an old man rang the church bell, and on one side of the church tower was an enormous stork´s nest. A small group of middle-aged and older villagers were clustered around the chuch door. Far from exhibiting the dour-faced suspicion of many small-towners, these people were amazingingly friendly, giving us bundles of hierba buena and inviting us in to see their church. One man asked me where I was from, then started spouting very plausible statistics about how much of California was Hispanic. I guess there´s still pride, however far removed, whenever the Spanish culture and language makes inroads.

I lit two candles in the church and it was immediately clear who I was lighting them for, though I hadn´t been thinking conciously of those two people.

The walking came easily and it didn´t feel like work until about the 18th km, when the last 3 km to Rabanal de Camino pitched upwards and my feet started to let me know it was time to stop.

Rabanal de Camino, with 35 full-time residents and a mediavel look, is at 1150 meters (Astorga is at 873), so the whole day was a gradual climb, with the last part being less gradual. Tomorrow I´ll hit the highest point on my Camino--just after Manjarin, at 1517 meters. Arrived in Rabanal around noon, so that´s about 4 hours to walk around 20 km.

There ARE a lot of people walking, but it seems ok. Most pilgrims you encounter smile and say Buen Camino. A few times I fell into step with another pilgrim and we talked for a while--where are you from, why are you walking. You´re spilling intimate details of your life before you know the other person´s name. But then you slow down or speed up and the conversation is over, for now at least. It´s like currents in a river that coincide briefly and then veer off into parallel but separate streams.

Midday Mass
I found an albergue, dumped my pack at the closed front door (lots of pilgrims hanging out--I asked someone to watch my stuff), exchanged my boots for tennies, then went down the street to 12:30 mass, sung by 3 Benedictine brothers. The church was narrow and tall and cold, with a lavish gold leaf altar. Saints wore multi-colored robes, cherubs played guitars, and pillars were festooned with golden vines and cherub faces like giant flowers. No crucifix here--pride of place went to San Jose holding his child (Jesus). At the top of the altar was a gold scallop shell, symbol of Santiago.

I´d seen the 3 brothers come down the cobblestone street from their monastery to the church. They smiled at everyone, local and pilgrim alike, and one of them, who turned out to be the priest, gamely posed for a photo with an insistent pilgrim who treated the holy man as if he were a Disney character.

A dozen people filed into the church and waited quietly for the mass to begin. Most were older locals, but there were also a few pilgrims (to my shame, one took a flash photo during the mass). It was cold in the church and so quiet that swallowing seemed like a sacrilege. But when the Benedictines started in with the Gregorian chants, the whole place warmed up. After the chants and some call and response, there was a sermon about the mystery of the Holy Trinity (the festival of Corpus Christi is on June 6). The priest used the elaborate altarpiece as a teaching tool, pointing out representations of God the Father, the baby Jesus, and a dove, symbolizing the Holy Trinity.

Que seamos uno, he kept saying, which I thought was beautiful and inclusive--not "They are one" but "That we should all be one."

At some point during the mass, the tears started. I wasn´t thinking of anything sad and in fact I wasn´t really thinking at all. But the tears wouldn´t stop. I got tired of wiping them away and just let them run down my face. I felt embarrassed, but I didn´t know anyone there, and I told myself, Emotion is not the enemy. I´m not even sure what that means, but at that moment it felt like I couldn´t fight my very emotional response, even though I didn´t know what I was crying about. It felt a little like suddenly, in that cold church, warmed by chants written centuries ago, the world seemed impossibly old and sad and beautiful. And I was letting all that was old and sad and beautiful come through me and pour out of my eyes.

After the mass, the priest started talking about mundane parish business--the renovations of the Romanesque church up the street, the upcoming festivities--how fireworks were expensive, and the insurance for the fireworks even more expensive--which gave me time to recover and come back to myself. But as I emerged into the midday sun I felt that the mass had been harder on me than the 20-km walk.

Oh, one more thing. During the mass, when the priest brought out the tray with the challice and the little dish of hosts (tostones in Spanish, which always makes me think of toast), I got scared. I like going to mass now and then, especially in foreign countries. But when communion--the whole body-and-blood thing--looms, I always have to decide, Will I do it? Will I go all the way? I almost always answer no. I mean, who am I to partake of such a ritual, being essentially a non-beleiver? But today I said yes. Let´s do it. Let´s go all the way. So I did. Or rather, we did. Que seamos uno.

Fellow pilgrims of the day
Patricia, Australian world traveler now based in London. 70ish, with a beautiful, bony, somewhat ravaged face and bright blue eyes. Between Burgos and Leon, she tripped and fell on her face and arm. Her face was bleeding profusely and her arm didn´t feel quite right. She walked 6 km to the next town, where they cleaned her up and told her her arm was probably broken. They drove her to Leon where doctors applied a plaster cast and told her to return in a week for a checkup.

But I´m walking the Camino, she protested. Well, they said, you´re going to have to stop. But Patrica insisted that she would not, and they finally told her that she could get her checkup at Ponferrada, about seven day´s walk from Leon. And she´s walking, with a cast on her arm and big blue bruises on her face. She did make one concession--she´s not carrying her pack. She has it drivern ahead to her next stop.

As she told this story in the hostel, we all listened, rapt. One guy said the nuns in Leon were already telling her story. Another woman said to Patrica, "Now clear this up for me. Today I was walking, and I was really making time. I passed you, a woman with a broken arm and bruises on her face. And then, ten minutes later, I passed you again. Now did you get a ride or what?"

Patrica hadn´t gotten a ride, and no one could offer up a possible explantion for this other woman passing her, it seemed, twice. We joked about being at ground zero of the making of a saint.

In the future, I said, pilgrims will break their own arms just to follow in your footsteps.

We´ll build a shrine at the exact place where you fell, said someone else.

The broken-armed saint, said a guy perched on an upper bunk.

We were all kidding, sort of.

Daniel, 38, from Amsterdam, taking a 1-year leave of absence from his job as head of international marketing and acquisitions for a paint company. A year ago his girlfreind, a famous actress in Holland, died of cancer. Daniel went into a tailspin, and decide to walk the camino to work through his grief and see what came next.

"I ask people if they´re having a good walk," he told me. "And a lot of them say no. I ask why, and they say it´s the race for beds. They feel they have to get up early and race their 20 or 25 km, to get to the next place by noon or early afternoon: They stand in line until the hostal opens and then grab their bunk. It makes people so anxious."

His advice to me was to let go of the bed race. "There will always be a place for you, somewhere. And if you walk in the afternoon, you´ll find there´s hardly anyone on the Camino."

A woman from Quebec, recently retired from working at the national auditing office. She was the first pilgrim I saw this morning, the small woman walking with two big poles (a lot of pole walking on the trail, and yes, a lot of convertible pants).

She had a yoga pad strapped to the outside of her pack. Since retiring she´d been doing three hours of yoga a day. On the Camino, she said it was a necessary corrective to walking so much.

We talked about how we felt we weren´t walking for just ourselves. I told her I´d offered to carry prayers and objects for family and friends. She´d done something similar, but with a twist. She´s asked people to write a prayer or plea or problem on a slip of paper and seal it in an envelope. Each morning on the camino she opened one of the envelopes, and walked that day carrying whatever she´d read on the slip of paper.